


Bothriocyrtum californicum

by mahwaha



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Domestic, Gen, Spiders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-16
Updated: 2014-06-16
Packaged: 2018-03-24 16:52:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3776152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mahwaha/pseuds/mahwaha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dirk didn’t understand Nepeta, with her inexpressive eyes and her guileless laughter. He didn’t understand her as an extension of himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bothriocyrtum californicum

The first time his bro up and left him alone, really left him, had been when he was eight. Ms. Maryam couldn’t make it to watch him, so his bro gave Nepeta (who had been a sleek, fiery flash of maybe-ferret, maybe-polecat) a good hard look and slapped a sandwich together before busting his ass out of there. There was no question about it, just “don’t answer the door,” and “bed by nine.” 

Dirk remembered sulking in the cesspool of his loneliness and paranoia while he tucked up tight beneath his bro’s desk. He remembered Nepeta’s claws prickling up his bare belly as she crawled beneath his shirt, scaling his collar bones like handholds before coiling herself around his neck. Her breath tickled where she shoved her nose inelegantly against his ear, and he twisted his face away. She shifted into long, serpentine coils to flick her forked tongue against the tear tracks on his cheeks. She squeezed around his shoulders with her entire body, and he broke down and bawled.

He was _eight_ , and it was the first time he’d been left alone. Fuck if he didn’t grow into a self-sufficient little monster, but that growing took time. Anal retentiveness, invasive problem solving, and a whole slew of control freakery didn’t appear overnight. All he had were his bro, Rose (bro’s stunning, snarky whiptail of a daemon), Ms. Maryam, and her cranky aye-aye, Karkat. And Nepeta. Always Nepeta. But that night had been the first time that he wondered if he was supposed to have Nepeta.

While he ground his palms into his eyes and bit down on his blubbering, she stretched out her scaly hide into what he’d later be able to identify as _Eunectes murinus_ , but what he’d thought of as the coolest, sleekest full-body squeeze that he’d ever want.

“Dirk,” she’d hissed, “it’s okay to cry.” It had been the furthest thing from how he was feeling, and the shock of it made Nepeta ripple off of his body before knocking away his bro’s desk chair with the expanding of her body. She caught him in her broad paws, physically scooping him into the striped circle of her white forelegs. _Panthera tigris tigris_ , mutated. He clung to her ruff as she rolled with him, letting him press to the slope of her chest and combing his hair back with her rough, scratchy tongue. “I’ve got you,” she said, and her voice sounded so much bigger than he felt.

She didn’t feel like his daemon, then. She felt like someone else, someone older and bigger and safer; she didn’t feel like him. It was alarming and comforting all at once, as he sniffled into her fur and basked in the rise and fall of her chest. His lungs matched hers perfectly, despite the dissonance of the moment.

As he grew older, he grew sharper around the edges. Nepeta didn’t catch him crying, though she always chased his sorrow like an overprotective hellcat. Funny, considering her penchant for felines. Ironic, considering how she’d settled: _Bothriocyrtum californicum_ , the trapdoor spider.

It suited him, with his holed up workroom and fingers on the strings. It did not suit Nepeta, who had a big voice with a warm smile curled into it, and who used to carry herself in a much bigger body. Bears, complete with bear hugs; nosy cats with heads that took up his entire lap while he worked, like lions and tigers; oddly lively gators with rippling backs, where she always looked like she smiled; any of these would have been better. Nepeta spent two months as a margay ( _Leopardis wiedii_ ) when he thought she had settled, too small but bursting with sass when she’d threaten to swat his projects down with her tail (“because you can’t live in two rooms! We’re visiting Roxy and Calliope or I’m using your work as a jungle gym”).

Dirk didn’t understand Nepeta, with her inexpressive eyes and her guileless laughter. He didn’t understand her as an extension of himself.

“Hey,” she said, and tickled his earlobe with her pedipalps. Her long legs sprawled along his neck, tapping and prodding. “You’ve been reading page three for a long time. Stop being a broody butt and finish your reports so we can go.” When he reached back to touch her cephalothorax, she gripped his finger like a normal spider might snatch a cricket, sans fangs.

She wasn’t near as elegant as a margay, but she still had the demanding presence of a bear. Spiders weren’t big or cuddly, but she still managed to pull both off. She was his daemon. Her body shaped according to who he was, but the essence of her still had its own direction. She was still Nepeta. She was still his, as discordant as it sounded.

A smile flickered past Dirk’s mouth in a blink.

“You just want to harass Gamzee while Jane bakes me cupcakes.” He held his hand still to let her amble onto it, abdomen fat and dusty brown. Her arms stroked along his knuckles, but for the life of him he couldn’t tell what she was looking at.

“It’s less boring than yawning forever while you read about optimizing gear combinations, or whatever.” She paused, skittering backwards toward his wrist to prod more at his skin. “Your hands are cracking. It’s winter. Use some lotion, jeeze.” 

Dirk snorted as she set about a slow crawl up his arm. Part of him wondered if she would have made a better jumping spider, if she had to be a spider. Part of him wondered if she would have suited someone like Roxy better, someone who had a lot of energy and an earnest nature.

“I’ll do that,” he promised. Dirk gathered his loose report one-handed, lining it up against the edge of the desk and laying his pens out beside it. Nepeta had made it to his shoulder by the time he was scraping his chair back to stand, and laid one leg against his jaw as he grabbed his coat from the peg. She sat still while he wound one scarf around her, then two, and pulled on a cap at her insistence (“your hair will be _fine_ , I promise”). Coat buttoned. Gloves on. Door locked behind him, and snow crunched like bones beneath his boots.

“What were you thinking about?” Nepeta slid lower down his front, and he popped his collar to catch the heat in his scarves for her. His breath steamed in front of him with a long, billowing tail.

“When?” He asked, shoving his hands into his pockets and glancing up at the cotton-drenched sky. Snow drifted down in fat flakes, stirred by intermittent gusts of wind that made Nepeta duck further down his coat.

“Before. You were staring at your report.” He can feel her legs catch on the cotton of his t-shirt, holding her in place. He wonders if becoming a trapdoor spider has made her want to burrow, more. It’s not something he’s tried to collect data on, but he could.

“You.” Or, he could ask her. She would know whether or not she wanted to burrow more often than before, but the tactic was surprisingly straight-laced. Forward. Something Nepeta would do, in his position. Something he did for Nepeta, as he continued to grow with her. Dirk kicked a snow clod and took a deep breath. “You aren’t like me.”

It wasn’t something those words could even capture, really. At fifteen, Dirk had tested their bonds; he’d urged Nepeta to run as far away from him as possible, and she’d let fly as a cheetah when he turned tail to hit the opposite direction. They’d come storming back together like weather fronts, undeniably different but of the same ilk. He knew she was his when his heart sang with her distance, had down he was hers when her distressed purring and anxious bites only soothed him. She was undeniably him, and he her.

But it wasn’t that simple.

“I wouldn’t want to feel like you,” Nepeta said, and her voice didn’t lose any of its luster through the layers of cloth. “Two of you would be two times as bad at taking care of one of you.”

“I’m perfectly capable of-”

“Taking care of your work, and being kind of gross and in your friends’ business, and kind of just acting like a nerd lord. You need me to be me.” The answer sounded surprisingly simple and easy to parse, on its own. “I can be me and part of you. You’re you and part of me. I mean, two of me would probably be too much. You wouldn’t get anything done.”

Dirk glanced down the pit of his coat, obscured by scarves (one pink and one green, both gifts). Nepeta’s answer settled relatively well in his chest, but there was one thing that bothered him, still.

“Way to insult a guy while trying to be heartfelt.”

“It’s not an insult if it’s true,” she said, and her laugh rang in his ears as he steered them both toward Jane.


End file.
